They tell you that you are a god, that thousands of years of unnamed power thrums beneath your veins. Yet your lungs rise and fall as they always have, and you feel just as human as ever-
(Maybe you never have been. Maybe your only reference point is you, and that is where your error is gravest. If you have been a god all along, what would you know of being human?)
They start to fear you for the accident of your birth. You try to tell them that you are the same as you have always been. You play all the same games, throw pies off the stony balcony ledge and watch them land and burst open like overripe fruit, gooey cream exploding into the air.
But they stop smiling at your jokes. They stop listening to the songs you've learned to play on your flute. They never say we're not friends anymore, because it's not true, not exactly. Friends are people that can be trusted and you, you are not a person.
There is only one man in the world who thinks otherwise.
They want to take him away from you. They want to tear you from your home and your family and what little you have left. You have been taught not to be covetous, but this angers you.
So you run, like the wind that has been trapped between the trees. You see the wide, open sky and decide to conquer it, just like your people have for generations. But it's not the storm that swallows you; the waves claims you before the clouds can.
You sink to the ocean's depths, and your grip on the reins starts to falter.
(You are not human, and this keeps you alive. Perhaps it is the elements. Perhaps it is the magic. Perhaps it is something far older than both. Your eyes glow beneath your closed eyelids, and your tattoos burn with impossible light. You are breathing still.)
They want to ask you how you did it, want you to reach inside the depths of your murky memory and proffer your secrets to them. But you have no answers to give her when she keeps questioning how you forced the turning tides to do your bidding.
The answer is simple. You didn't, the monster did.
See, there is a monster inside of you. Not a god, because gods are never this angry, never this vindictive. The monster wants to rage and destroy everything it sees painted in red, but you will not let it. The monster eats you up when you get scared or angry, and you are never strong enough to make it go away.
She is. She calls out to you and her voice somehow lulls the monster back to sleep. She cradles you in her arms and tells you that you can let go. You think her words are lost on you, because you are not the monster.
They want to pull the monster out from inside you, and you let them. The monster has laid waste to armies while all you have done is run, run, run. Your people are gone because of you, but the monster saved you. Perhaps it can save them too.
She tells you in plain terms that she does not like this, and you can see the fear in her eyes when she talks about rage and pain and you. You do not know how to respond. Perhaps if you cut enough pieces of yourself away, the monster can finally save you both.
It's okay, you want to say. I'm scared of it too.
All you give her is cold, cold silence.
They are gone, and you are all that is left of them. They are gone, and it is you, two animals, and a monster that stubbornly claws its way out of you when you are forced to confront this fact. The monster is everything your people would have hated, because it aches for blood and vengeance in a way you never can.
(They are your people, they have to be, and you cannot be this other, this god, that they just raised like a cuckoo in the nest.)
In the desert, as the heat scorches your bare skin, you look at your shaking hands. You do not deserve to be the last of your kind, because now when anyone thinks about your culture of peaceful monks, they will think about the monster inside you.
They are right to fear the monster, and you are right in wanting to control it. You seek out someone who promises to help you tame it. He wears the saffron of your people but smiles sadly when he says he is not one of them. He tells you about your guilt and your fear, your hope and your longing, and all the things you have to confront.
And it doesn't make sense. This isn't about you, this is about excising the monster inside you.
But as you gulp down the horrible banana onion juice he insists on feeding you, the truth hits you like a falling meteor. There is no monster, no other force inside you that magically appears when you get sad or angry.
There has only ever been you.
They are disappointed that you cannot summon the monster anymore, but you are just relieved. The anger keeps building inside you, like a roaring flame or a rising tide or a towering mountain or a howling wind. Its pitch and roll keeps you up at night, the names of all you have lost black marks against the inside of your skin.
You try to be as you have always been, but your smiles never reach your eyes, and the notes of your flute always sound out in minor key. They probably notice that something is wrong, but they don't say much except to push you towards your destiny.
Your temples are in ruins, and they think you weak for trying to hold on to them. They think you weak for forgiving, not knowing that the alternative, letting the monster have at them, would have been far worse. But it's okay now, the monster can't hurt anyone ever again. You can't hurt anyone ever again.
They tell you to kill him, and you want to say no. The voices of your friends, the voices in your head, the voice of the monster, they all scream at you to just end it. But a smaller voice, one that speaks from your heart, just whispers in quiet opposition.
The monster is you, has been this whole time, but you are not a monster. You are more than a living relic or a god given flesh. You are a person, the last of your kind, and they all live on in you, so for their sakes and yours, you say no.
"I'm not going to end it like this."
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